All Breeds

One of the cool things about owning TC is that he is a Friesian Sporthorse, registered with the Friesian Sporthorse Association. When I first heard of this, I didn't care that much. Cool, he's registered. It means I know his birthday and maybe he's worth more?

But earlier this year I discovered that they do USDF All Breeds awards! And I sort of dilly dallied. I didn't actually get his USDF membership until mid-July. I didn't get him transferred over to my ownership until like late August. And I finally put in for all breeds at the very end of September.

It was worth it

He was such a good sport about this (and so was
Kate who took these pictures!)

All Breeds is expensive if you do things this late, but I am very familiar with being super super close to something, deciding that next year will be fine to do it, having horrible things happen, and then wishing I had just fucking done it the first time I could do it. This literally happened with my Bronze medal. I could have had it in 2006 instead of 2009 if I had just signed up for Third. He had clean changes! He was scoring well at Second! WHYYY. 

Obviously that eventually worked out. 

But you never know what might happen. So I decided to take my lesson and show budget for September and mail it to USDF for TC's declaration.

So many ribbons this year!

I was worried that other people would do the same thing. There was one person in Training level who had declared with a rather low score. So on the one hand, I dropped my check in the mail thinking "I just won all breeds" and on the other hand I was thinking "or I just donated a lot of money to USDF only to get beat out for this shit."

I stalked the site for WEEKS hoping that TC would show up. Nothing. It became October. Nothing. I emailed them and they said YES they got it! Check the website tomorrow! Nothing. 

Until...

There were others... I just cropped them out for privacy's sake

We popped up in FIRST PLACE! Sure enough, there was another rider who had gotten in late, but she had a lower score than me. 

It was really hard not to count my eggs before they hatched, but sure enough, the deadlines all passed and WE HAD WON ALL BREEDS!

I eagerly awaited (and might have emailed a few people in the FSA and USDF offices to bug them) but our awards appeared in early December.

He wanted to face me and smile instead

Giant ribbon

That's better

I've never won anything like this before, and the prizes were great. The Friesian Sporthorse Association sent me a big tricolor ribbon with the word CHAMPION on it. The USDF sent me a medal with All Breeds on it. They clearly have a million of those. Still, I really appreciate it. So much.

It's really cool!

I have a full show season recap ready to go for next week, but wanted a whole post dedicated to winning All Breeds this year. This is such an awesome horse, and I'm so excited for the future with him!